Savva (Trlajic) was a bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church who served as Bishop of Gornji Karlovac and was killed in 1941, during the persecution of the Serbian Orthodox population in the Independent State of Croatia. Born Svetozar Trlajic on 18 July 1884 in the town of Mol, then within Austria-Hungary, he was educated in his home district and at Novi Sad before studying at the seminary of Sremski Karlovci and taking a law degree at the University of Belgrade. He was ordained deacon in 1909 by the Bishop of Timisoara and ordained priest shortly afterward, serving for some years as a parish priest.
After he was widowed, Svetozar entered monastic life, receiving the tonsure with the name Sava at Krusedol Monastery on 27 October 1929 and becoming the monastery's rector and an archimandrite. He was elected an auxiliary bishop in Sremski Karlovci on 30 September 1930, and in 1938 he was appointed Bishop of Gornji Karlovac, with his episcopal residence at Plaski. In 1941 he was additionally named administrator of the neighbouring Eparchy of Slavonia.
With the invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustase regime in 1941, the Serbian Orthodox clergy and faithful of the region were subjected to violent persecution. According to the tradition surrounding his life, Bishop Sava refused orders to abandon his diocese and withdraw to Belgrade, choosing to remain with his flock. He was arrested on 17 June 1941 together with three priests and thirteen Orthodox laymen, held under guard and tortured, and then taken to the concentration camp at Gospic. In August 1941 he was transported with about two thousand other Serbs into the Velebit mountains, where he was put to death; the site of his burial is unknown.
Bishop Sava is numbered among the Serbian new-martyrs and confessors who perished during the Second World War. He was glorified as a hieromartyr by the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. He is commemorated on April 22, and is also listed among the Serbian hieromartyrs on June 4 and July 4.
